


Pericyclic

by Kynurenine



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Gen, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-10-01 12:29:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17244218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kynurenine/pseuds/Kynurenine
Summary: -where bonds are created or destroyed in a concerted cyclic transition state.(Snapshots of the Loonaverse i built in my head in 1000 words or less.)





	1. Equilibrium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A state in which opposing forces or influences are balanced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the only 2019 resolution I made: finally posting fics I usually only dream about but never really write lol.

"It was you."

Yves does not seethe at her presence. Unfortunate, although not at all unexpected. Olivia needed her to be angry though, seeing how it's the easiest way to make her plan work.

"Yes, _Sooyoung_ , it was me," the younger growls, taking care to emphasize the way she says the name.

It's the first step she takes in a dangerous direction. She is taking on a careful balancing act: poking and prodding and trying to get the Anger to resurface. It's there, Olivia knows. Like how magma is always underneath a volcano no matter how dormant it would appear to be, Sooyoung is the same with the past she feigns apathy with. 

The elder's mouth turns up in distaste, although she does not remark about the name. "Why?"

Olivia scoffs in reply. "You know why."

They've been here for a while. Olivia took her time merely watching the other woman stare up at the waning moon. She knew Sooyoung knew she was being watched, but only now did she acknowledge the presence of the raven-haired girl. The wind is strong where they are, at the top of a cliff. It howls, not unlike a baying wolf, though it makes way for the waves of their voices to ripple across the air.

Olivia wonders if there is a storm coming in, seeing the flashes of lighting in the gray gradually creeping over the horizon. If so, that could only mean one thing... or one person. Said somebody is not so easily trifled with, so she ought to make this quick.

Yves tuts. There is an apple in her hand now, probably pulled from her beloved little pocket dimension. She gently presses her fingers into it, turning it over to look for faults. It's perfect, of course. All her apples are, and there's an entire dimension chock full of them. Olivia finds it all rather unnerving, the manicured perfection Yves likes to parade around.

(Jinsoul once told her, in her strange poetic way of speaking, that there was only ever one bad apple. That she was cast away from the perfection of the others...That she wasn't an apple at all.)

"Don't tell me you're still not over that. It's been centuries, _Hyejoo_."

She wasn't over it, not in the very least. But Olivia grins anyway. One way or another, she's getting her revenge. This is just the first step: the Anger, and the rest will follow. 

 _Hyejoo,_ huh? So two can play the name game. All the better. Balancing acts only work with forces that oppose after all. 


	2. Polar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diametrically opposite. 
> 
> (alternatively, resembling an axis around which all else revolves.)

Haseul feels like brewing up a storm today. It's a constant mood: the tomultuous, chaotic swirling in the sky reflecting her inner turmoil.

Of course, if you had a war inside you, wouldn't you feel like it too?

Outwardly: Haseul is calm. Her eyelids flutter shut as she inhales deeply. Not too much though, just the right amount. As she opens her eyes, a lone tear trickles down a pale cheek.

She does not exhale. Not yet.

(Meteorologists have spotted a tropical cyclone making its way southwest across the Pacific to Southeast Asia.) 

Inwardly: Haseul makes her way across the icy plain as her crimson dress flutters in the wind. There is a feather softly swiveling down to the slate grey rock nearby, and Haseul is quick to bound over and let it fall to her palm instead.

(It's not too far.)

The feather grows colder, more razor sharp upon her touch, but she pays it no mind. Instead, her eyes scan the icy landscape, spotting a lone figure close to the horizon. White, feathered, alighting gently on a jutting edge of rock.

Crouching low, Haseul materializes a bow in one hand and the other one holding the feather pulls back its string. The sharp feather grows heavier outward, a weight like that of an arrowhead manifesting at the curve of her bow. She'd long sworn off slingshots. What she'd needed all this time is an arrow to point true to her target.

Inwardly: There is turmoil, looking less like a hunt and more of a battle. Haseul turns around to see herself in a shade of red that resembles what stains the ice after the deed. But she is looking forward as well, and she is clad in feathers of virgin white, her own face looking back at her in visible scorn.

Fight or flight. Funny how it all comes down to that. Either way, something will take flight. Arrow or Bird? 

And someone has to give. Red or White? It's a battle neither will win.

(ETA to landfall?)

Outwardly: Haseul exhales.

(Not long.)


	3. Concentration Gradient

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The process of particles moving from a high to low concentration region.

**Do you know who you are, Jinsoul?**

"Not really, but I can't say I haven't tried to figure that out."

**Of course. This is your first step in the right direction, then.**

Jinsoul sighs. It's been a long day, and now the fish she bought on impulse for a reason she's still trying to figure out is beginning to talk. She's _definitely_ taking a nap once she gets home. 

Squeezing into a finally vacated seat on the rather packed subway car, she lifts the filled plastic bag from the little aquarium it was in and levels her gaze at the blue betta. It continues to swim around as if nothing is happening, as fishes do, and the tall blonde can only sigh at the whole 'talking fish' ordeal. Jinsoul knows it's the exhaustion making her hear a disembodied voice from the little guy. There really isn't much of an explanation. As soon as she places the bag back into the aquarium, the fish seemingly replies to her thoughts. 

**Without doubt? Reality is only as you perceive it, dear Jinsoul. What you perceive now is only the truth, for you are enlighte-**

"Yeah man, whatever you say," the blonde mumbles, slipping her ear buds back on from where they previously hung on her neck. Energetic riffs of a rock song drown out whatever blather the fish was going to say, which is... weird for a voice in her head she just conjured up. Shrugging slightly, she decides to put it out of her mind for now. Before she knows it, the gentle rocking of the train is enough to lull her to sleep.

 

.......

**Do you know who you are, Jung Jinsoul?** **You are of the ocean as I was. The dark and deep... it calls to you. Do you understand?**

"Yes."

**Very well. It is time to wake, dear Leviathan.**

.......

 

Jinsoul snaps awake, both eyes opening, but only one can see. The blonde panics for a moment until she remembers that she's on the way home from work and the eye doctor, hence the patch she now feels over her left eye. Although... the train car is now completely empty, which makes Jinsoul flare up in panic again. Was she really exhausted enough to sleep _way_  past her stop?

**Not at all. I've only made the glass walls around us disappear.**

Besides the disembodied fish voice back in her ear and the weirdly empty train, there are a lot of things that have changed while she was asleep and only now did Jinsoul start to notice. One, the aqauarium in her lap has now magically disappeared, leaving the blue betta's plastic bag on the seat beside her.

**Well, almost all the walls. But we need this one to stay alive a little longer.**

Shaking her head as if to clear the voice away, she now takes note of the song playing in her ears now (with only one earbud hanging on, when did that happen?): music the blonde does not recognize, but it evokes something in her. It's a loop of the clipped swirling of strings, drums rapidly escalating into a crescendo of cymbals and descending softly into the guitar of the rock song she put on. Almost like... the musical equivalent of cresting waves breaking on and retreating from the shore only to start again. Both music and imagery seep into her head and make colors burn bright in the corners of her vision.

"What the fuck is... am I tripping?" She asks the fish, holding up its bag to her good eye. If she really is tripping, perhaps asking the fish all the questions wouldn't seem like such a bad idea now, ridiculous as the idea may be. 

**Reality is only as you perceive it, Jinsoul. Do you not see how I've made your eyes clearer than ever?**

That was not the answer she was looking for, although Jinsoul didn't really know what questions she was asking in the first place. Needless to say, she was very confused and her fish really needs to stop speaking in roundabout riddles. 

"That doesn't even make sense, I-" 

**Then let me enlighten you further. Take off what blinds you. Only then can we begin to search for the truth.**

"Take off what blinds m-" Oh. A hand subconsciously drifts to her eyepatch. No. No way in hell is Jinsoul going to take it off now. She can feel the itch of it, the colors that shift in the one eye that sees clearly and the muted bubbling in the one that doesn't. Taking it off now can't possibly bring any more clarity to a situation as strange as this, and she fears what she may see. 

**Alright then. The sight can wait. But The Others cannot.**

The others? This whole trip is making less and less sense the more the damned fish talks.

All of a sudden, the shriek of brakes are heard and Jinsoul holds on to the water-filled bag as the train car grinds to a halt. Immediately, the doors all hiss open, though only a long darkness can be seen beyond and... something else. The blonde flinches at the creeping tendrils of smoke making its way to her. Blue as the open ocean and writhing like the tentacles of a long-forgotten creature of the depths, it roots her to the ground in fear, but also... in a strange sense of excitement.

**Yes. it makes itself clear now, doesn't it?**

"What does?" 

Jinsoul's unseeing eye itches. Colors around the darkness of it now dance and whirl in tempestuous revelry at the edges of her vision. The smoke crawls through the air, much closer now, and as she takes her first inhale of it, a soft breeze comes into the train. It's... salty. The music is long gone now, replaced by the actual roar of an oncoming wave, the crash, the bubbling of the foam. 

**Your destiny, my dear. are you ready to accept it?**


	4. Serotonin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happiness and the cycle of waking and sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by an untitled poem by Alberto Caeiro about Jesus, youth, and optimism.

The child Yeojin came down from heaven one day, running and tumbling down the grassy hill as if fleeing godly wrath. One look at her lovely purple dress, burnt at the edges, one would think she was a meteorite who'd shed matter at re-entry and that would not be entirely incorrect.

She had tired of heaven, where the gods were in disagreement with each other and their own selves. The Fall was not kind to what remained of the Pantheon, and Yeojin grew sick of how they would pretend to be alright: as if Heejin's smile did not learn a cruel twist, or how Hyunjin's love turned into despair, or how Haseul's eyes are not her own sometimes.

And Vivi... Yeojin hurt the most to see the kind god stuck in a dream that could only make her yearn.

She'd descended on a ray of sunlight, a miracle courtesy of her strange new friend with her strange new eye. Yerim, by some unknown divine decree, told Yeojin that she'd taken it upon herself to bring peace to the Pantheon. A ridiculous notion, the young god had told her. The taller girl only laughed then, telling Yeojin to "have more faith in me and the others!" 

Although, Yeojin couldn't help hut hope that the odd-eyed girl's promise holds true. Even now, as the flowers whisper secrets to her and the stones show their curious nature... she can't help but imagine them all there with her.

Haseul, without pain in her eyes, would hold her hand as they walked and they would come upon the two Jins in a loving embrace. Vivi and Sooyoung would be weaving flower crowns in the grass, and Chaewon and Hyejoo would chase Jiwoo across the meadow, all laughter and no anger. Then Yerim would arrive with her friends that she spoke of, odd-eyes crinkled at the edges in happiness.

It would be such a sight. But alas Yeojin could only make do with playing with these dreams at night, molding them into vivid, picture-perfect scenes of completeness.

The dawn one day mid-spring brings a visit from Yerim, whose smile rivals the brightness of the sun that peeked over the horizon. The odd-eyed girl visibly shook in excitement, taking Yeojin's hand in hers and exclaiming "I've found them, Yeojin! I found them all," not unlike Archimedes, and Yeojin knew everything was gonna be all right.


	5. Curve/Snowflake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sur une courbe continue sans tangente, obtenue par une construction géométrique élémentaire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's cold, and fractals are awesome. This is in second person because reasons.

She touches you. You melt. It's love, you think. 

Divinity is made all the more interesting when Yves tells you about Below. How the world outside Eden was so much more exciting, and how it was without restrictions of any sort. Freedom, she says, and you would have already been sold from that word alone but then-

She took your hand, and the world, previously boring and plain... oh. Oh how it melted and flowed and fizzled into something new. The shape of which you couldn't really tell, but the plain old cut and dry edges of the world seem to have given way to something much more defined.

That was in late autumn. It's winter now. You know it's love, how her arms wrap around you, warm like there are softly glowing embers beneath her skin. Love that seems to make the walls that trap you expand in her presence. Pressing closer to your back, she lets out a content sigh. Meanwhile, a blizzard rages outside with the wind howling vaguely like a wolf. Perhaps there are wolves in the forest outside Eden and it is not the wind at all, but you couldn't possibly know that, being stuck here and all.

Not for much longer though. Yves promised you'd make your escape as soon as the snow melts. A shame. You would have loved to play in the soft-looking white drifts, but you agree with her knowing the dangers of leaving tracks in the snow. For now, you cuddle with your lover who thaws whatever cold settles into your bones whenever you are reminded of your restriction. The forest no longer looks like such an impenetrable wall of green, as hope and love make you see more of the spaces between the trees where you could carve your path outside. 

Yves is gently snoring into your back now. Ah, how temptation grows. She is the first to tell you to be careful when summoning something, knowing that anything unnatural that happens in Eden could rouse the Teacher's suspicion. But... the blizzard has just subsided, and the snow flutters so prettily outside the window! A few snowflakes wouldn't hurt, would it?

You take a breath, not too deep. Just enough. Your eyes open and upon releasing the breath you held, snow falls from the air above your bed onto you and Yves. Taking great care not to wake her, you turn onto your back and you let fall the first snowflake onto your tongue, making you giggle, which is just enough to wake Yves from her still shallow slumber.

"Mmmm... Chuu? Whuz going on?" The sleepy brunette mumbles, and you can't help but swoon a little at her sleep-husky voice. You don't get to answer though, as a couple snowflakes fall on her mussed up hair and nose and almost immediately melt. Yves blinks at you in confusion, staring down at the small drop of wetness on her nose craning her neck to look upwards at the last flakes that fall around you. 

"Is this... snow?"

"Yep!" You reply, giggling some more as you brush away the snow on your sheets and hair. "It's so pretty! And... you know winter is about to end soon and we were never allowed outside so I-"

"Shhh. It's okay, love. I just don't want you getting into trouble over pretty things, you know?" Yves says with a small grin. You grin in return, placing a kiss on the tip of her nose.

"Oh, you know I'm always careful. I haven't gotten in trouble for you yet, and you're the prettiest thing of all!"

At this, Yves blushes and hides her face into your chest. She mumbles something like "just go to sleep already," and as she tightens her hold on you as if afraid to let go, your eyes droop and you do exactly as she says.

 

...

 

Winter again. You've lost count and she's lost you.

It's so, so damn cold without her to radiate warmth beside you. Watching from the outside, you can only yearn and yearn and yearn and never quite get back what once was something so simple to you.

Love. Like the molecules of water that bond and crystallize into the perfect little snowflakes that fall on you now, you watched it melt away just like that, all those springs ago.

For now, you imagine warmth. You imagine Yves' smile is directed at you, that her hand is in yours, that her touch is enough to melt you into a happy little puddle of love. It's enough. For now. 


	6. Astronomical Dusk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geographical center: 18° below the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought I might (barely) bring this back from the dead just in time for Easter. Inspired by "Remember, with quick steps on the white beach" by Ricardo Reis.

It is exactly midday when Jungeun remembers to walk. Her shadow, a dark pool beneath her feet, grows long as she treads the careful path laid before her. She asks no questions and thinks no conscious thought as a dreamer does. Except Jungeun is very much awake.

 

When did she start? Jungeun only remembers midday, and the walk. The same path every day like a recurring dream doomed to remain beyond the grasp of true memory.

 

Nautical dusk finds her steps quieting into the sand of the coast at the edge of the earth. Twilight, astronomical, looms over her like the ocean beyond: azure where her eyes can perceive depth, murkier where she cannot. She stops, blonde hair scattered by the breeze. Her path ends here, but the dream does not.

 

There are frantic footfalls behind her now, a late companion. This, too, is a vague memory, although the girl who stops by the foam-darkened sand is not. The taller blonde appears to be muttering something about freshwater to the fish in the plastic bag she is holding, which she unties afterward and empties into the incoming tide. It does not swim, however, merely bobbing up and down the waves before it is washed out into the wide ocean.

 

The taller woman only spares Jungeun a glance as they both gaze into the setting sun. A shadow momentarily appears on the horizon: writhing, serpentlike, presumably of gigantic scale as it seems to rise up and half-devour, half-drag the sun into the sea. Then, a sudden jolt throughout Jungeun's body, followed by the gasp that comes with a sudden lucidity. Darkness completely shrouds both girls on the beach, save for the nearly imperceptible glow of a blue iris not unlike Jungeun's own crimson one. 

 

The dream ends here for Jungeun. Unbeknownst to her for now, the dream begins for the other blonde unnamed and unresponsive to Jungeun's questioning as she walks steadily into the surf. She notices the similar uniform, the same blue of the stranger's eye against her red, as a memory claws its way to the forefront of her mind.

 

_"...while Apollo bends like a high branch, the blue curve he gilds. And the tide, high or low, flows without ceasing."_

 

_"Am I not meant to be Apollo in this? Then why is it always you with the poetry, Jinsoul?"_

 

_A smile, accompanied by eyes of oceans' depth crinkled at their coasts. But only for a moment before they part, as Jinsoul partakes in her own dream, walks her own way._

 

_"Just something to remember me by before I go. Keep it for me, lest I forget."_

 

_The ocean breathes, salty. Jinsoul swallows the glowing lump in her throat, and it burns with a star's heat all the way down._


	7. Ultradian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recurring with a period shorter than a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the mangled C++ and binary.

-falling.)

A sudden thud, followed by a wailing Yeojin and Haseul's alarmed shout. There's red, so much red: on her shirt, pooling on the floor, splashed against Hyunjin's hands. And as Vivi vaults over the counter to help, she can't help but feel as if this has all happened before, albeit somewhere else.

(Glimpses of a fall, then pain so excruciating and unbelievable and  _human._ Teeth and bone and anger and 01000010 01101100 01101111 01101111 01100100 01110011-)

**//run-time error**

"It's just my kool-aid," assures Heejin, immediately recounting the events leading up to the collision, the spill, then the slip and fall. Vivi sighs in relief, as the world seems to right itself beneath her feet. The color of fear dissipates and everything is drenched in the pale light of happiness once more. Strange, although Vivi does not dwell on it too much. It's all gone as quickly as it came.

Haseul apologetically volunteers to clean up the mess, mop already in hand, so the pink-haired girl is free to return to tend to a waiting customer. The tall boy greets her with a smile she swears she's seen before, leaning on the counter and asking for a pair of skates, size 240. Soon he is sat on a bench putting his skates on, as deja vu pounds at the back of Vivi's mind. One, two, three. Pause. The sickly white wash of the daylight dims to the beat. One, two, three.

**//run-time error**

Every blink is an hour past. Every breath is a vanished god. For the moment, Vivi is gliding along in a neon-lit roller rink as she laughs breathlessly the way only humans can. The too-wrong smile on the boy from earlier is rightfully on the face of her companion as she rubs circles into the hand clutched loosely in hers. Distantly, she hears different people's laughter, a different set of skates: muffled the way it would sound as if she sank through the floorboards.

(Heaven is a place Above that's colored too harshly but Paradise is 01001000 01100101 01110010 01100101-)

**//run-time error**

Vivi closes her eyes, holds her breath to try and stop time. It doesn't stop the floor from undulating beneath, shifting from smooth wood to chilly stone. There's red, so much red: on her shirt, pooling on the floor, splashed against her hands. Only now it's not a drink for anyone except the spiteful wolf before her.

**//do loop execution**  
  
**do** {not remember this again.}

(Heaven is a place Above that looks like it was bleached clean of blood, but it wasn't always that way. **#error** : The last thing Vivi remembers is-)


	8. Metamorphosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A striking change in appearance, character, or circumstance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sickness in me has reached the threshold where it usually allows me to write, but it also gave me a fever dream wherein Go Won was both Jesus and Kyubey from Madoka Magica. This is a much less disturbing reimagining.

The crown is more of a phantom weight on Go Won's head these days than a literal one. She'd stopped wearing the actual thing Yves had crowned her with, figuring it was rather impractical to traipse around in despite its regal beauty. 

 

Nowadays she wears it as the parts of herself that are new and different and inhuman: the name they gave her, sour on her tongue like the flesh she'd been made to devour. Go Won. Burning gold like the nectar of gods, she'd turned the name around in her mouth ( _"So this is what divinity tastes like,"_ ) as her hair grew into a similar shade. With the midnight of her hair gone, the dark underside of Go Won's being grew eyes where the brilliant blue of her godhood does not reach. Yves looked at her with the utmost pride then, right before their embrace, right before the crown dug its roots into her skull.

 

Go Won feels the roots even now, as she treads the dark expanse of an icy landscape in summer. Like antlers that grew inward instead of out, they poke into her memory and create false ones, although their strange vividness led Go Won to believe that they are merely not her own. Perhaps like this one, where she doesn't remember ever venturing onto a cold wasteland cut only by a long, lonely road.

 

She remains walking. Urged on by the ghastly thorns pressing into her sentience, her feet move of their own accord; on and on, tirelessly even as her shadow joins the night's shroud. Onward still, with only the road and watchful stars as Go Won's companions, that is, until a distant rumble punctuates the silence of her walk, followed by a light slicing across the dark–the trappings of a storm headed her way, contained in a truck the colour of sunshine.

 

The vehicle blows right past Go Won. She sees red, feels the swirl of the tempest within, and she runs after it without reason. It's a moving surrealism: god is a stormchaser, running after a twister as it flees from her in a brilliant yellow truck. All against a landscape so perfectly empty it can only be fiction. Go Won looks up once at the stars above, wondering if there are witnesses to this strange scene behind the lights that can only blink. She wonders what they could possibly take away from this, if it all makes more sense when viewed from above as a whole, not as this... this tease of an elusive picture. 

 

Lagging far behind the truck, like her understanding of this bizarre sequence, the blonde trips over an unilluminated elevation in the road and next thing she knows, the sky is pale gray once more. Go Won turns to look back at her own pale flesh on the dark soil only once and moves on. As she walks away (aimless and urgeless, chasing a storm she figured might have dissolved by now) she imagines if the roots in the body she leaves will grow further into the soil unattended.

 

It's not so cold anymore in this newly grown body, so Go Won sheds a layer and trudges on to wherever her feet will take her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, for the time. You can yell at my dumb ass on twitter @thothaseul


End file.
